“With your help, we’re going to win a great victory tomorrow,’’ Gingrich told a small but boisterous crowd in a Tampa airport hangar. “And when we win a great victory tomorrow, we’ll have sent a signal to [the liberal billionaire] George Soros, to Goldman Sachs, and to the entire New York and Washington establishment: Money power can’t buy people power.’’
But Gingrich’s prospects do not look bright.
A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday showed Romney with a 14-point lead in Florida, up from 9 points three days earlier. Romney had the support of 43 percent of the state’s likely Republican voters, to Gingrich’s 29 percent, while Ron Paul and Rick Santorum had 11 percent each, the poll found. Only 7 percent were undecided, although 24 percent said they could change their minds.
The survey also indicated that Romney has wooed a broad swath of the Republican electorate, including groups that had been cool to him. According to the poll, he now leads Gingrich among conservatives, white evangelical Christians, and Tea Party movement members.
A win today would give Romney a major boost as the race scatters to the seven states that vote over the next month. Florida’s haul - 50 winner-take-all delegates - is more than any candidate has accumulated in the first three contests.
Even as he courted Floridians, Romney told reporters he plans to campaign tomorrow in Minnesota, which votes Feb. 7, and Nevada, which votes Saturday and which Romney won in 2008.
The former Massachusetts governor was ebullient as he raced from rally to rally yesterday, hopping from a heavy equipment dealership in Jacksonville, then to Dunedin, and finally to a packed rally at the Villages, a retirement community near Orlando, where he ended the day.
At the final event, even Romney’s 5-year-old grandson, Parker, joined in the enthusiasm. “It looks like Papa’s going to win,’’ he exclaimed to the crowd.
